


fallback

by bibliocratic



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Domestic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, In the the sense that they get a mostly happy ending, M/M, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:35:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24980047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bibliocratic/pseuds/bibliocratic
Summary: Martin clears his throat.“I'd like to talk to you about something,” he replies eventually. “And I know that we're not going to agree on it, but I want you to at least – hear me out, alright?”Or: The world isn't as safe as Jon wishes it sometimes was.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 15
Kudos: 258





	fallback

**Author's Note:**

> For @kingcael - the prompt: 'for you'
> 
> This fic features in the background the character of Lewis, Jon and Martin's son, who has turned up in a few oneshots, but these don't need to be read first. 
> 
> No content warnings, aside from mild, non-graphic discussions of peril.

“He was showing me another room he's made it to on his game,” Jon offers as an explanation as he ambles back into the living room. “Some sort of creepy dungeon, lots of what I can only presume are zombies. He can turn into a dragon now with this magic cloak thing, it's all very sophisticated.”

Martin, whose knowledge and ability with video games both started and ended with having a go on someone's Game Boy Colour one rainy school break, makes a supportive, 'showing-interest' noise as he feels around for the remote before finding it wedged under his thigh, muting the sound of a gritty BBC drama he is clearly not enamoured with. He shuffles over to make room on the sofa. Disturbing the cat, who jumps off his knees, casting a betrayed gaze upon the offender before she haughtily goes to commandeer the high-backed chair usually taken up by Jon.

“Dragons are one of the few things that haven't turned out to actually exist, and tried to murder us.”

“Oh, don't be like that,” Jon smiles as he drops down next to him. Martin's got a beer out of the fridge now Lewis has gone to bed, and Jon leans forward to snaffle it from the coffee table, takes an slow sip, winces at the flavour and puts it back down on its coaster. “Swimming's at ten Saturday, isn't it? Still haven't fixed his goggles.”

“Half past, they had to move the rota round for some other thing,” Martin says distantly. In the background, someone on the TV has their mouth bared in shouting, and some grim-dark poorly shaved detective is holding a gun.

Martin's shoulders are set tight. He's twisting his wedding ring round and round and round, fidgety and unsettled all evening, and now he's leant forward with his elbows on his knees, half-way through a beer on a Thursday night even though he can get funny about drinking in the house on a weekday.

“You want to talk about it?” Jon asks quietly.

Martin frowns, but doesn't ask how he knows. His palm opens from clenched to fold their fingers together, his touch chilly from the condensation on the bottle.

Jon waits for him.

Martin clears his throat. He sources out the remote again and flicks the TV to standby, the dour detective vanishing morosely.

“I'd like to talk to you about something,” Martin replies eventually. “And I know that we're not going to agree on it, but I want you to at least – hear me out, alright?”

“Alright,” Jon says carefully. A frown has rooted on his own face, but he pushes the curious simmer to a lower heat and tries to be patient. “Alright. What – what do you want to talk about?”

“What happened last week.”

“ _Martin_...”

“Let me finish,” Martin says, his tone slightly sharper. He doesn't shout, never in the house. The only time Lewis sees his dad raise his voice in anger, he's belligerently got his hands in the guts of the boiler, pride the only thing stopping him call a plumber, or else he's stubbed his toe against the side table he always manages to catch.

Jon lets out a heavy breath.

“ _Fine,_ ” he says. “Fine – we – we can talk about it. You know what I think.”

“Yeah, well, I don't.”

“It was an outlier. It doesn't mean there's a conspiracy.”

“I can't see why you're downplaying this. It was a threat, and you got _hurt._ ”

“A few bruises from the fall. Look, Daisy and Basira handled it. They were – they were a lone Hunter. It wasn't anything organised, so I don't see the need to twist myself in knots when it won't happen again.”

Martin scoffs dismissive. “Last I counted, we've had three 'it won't happens again' in the last ten years. Face it, we've been _lucky._ This one got too close.”

“So what are you suggesting?” Jon says, deliberately calmly. Martin'll get to his point eventually, but he'd rather cut through whatever he's been stewing in for the past several hours.

Martin throws up his hands.

“I am _suggesting_ that we consider the very real possibility that something like this might happen again. Something _worse_ than some mangy Hunter or clueless cultist. These things out there.... there's more than one of them who'd see a former Archivist as a threat, Christ, I just want you to take this seriously...”

“I _do take_ – ” Jon's voice spikes before he exhales hard and lowers his tone again. “Of course I take this seriously. _Of course_ I worry. But if someone came here, if _anyone_ came here, I'd – I'd _Know...._ ”

“Knowing didn't stop you from getting hurt,” Martin insists. “It – it doesn't make you _invincible._ ”

“I've never thought that...”

“We need to prepared, is all I'm saying. Your... the knowledge you get from the Eye, it's so much, it's so much less than before. So what if it's not enough, what if it tells you something too late or not at all?”

“Martin, I'm not going to get myself worked up over maybes.”

“Maybe you should!” Martin snaps.

They are both bullishly quiet for a moment before Martin holds his hands up again.

“Alright,” he presses on, lower pitched than before. “Alright, then lets deal with facts then. Fact number one: there are – there are forces out there that want to see you come to harm.”

“ _Martin._ ”

“Am I correct?” Martin repeats. His gaze won't leave Jon's. His temper's made his neck and throat go blotchy, but he's pressing his hands down too hard on his knees to stop their tremors.

Jon meets his eyes.

“Correct,” he says. Because it's what Martin wants to hear, because it's what Jon tries not to think about when the night-time drags loud and sleepless, and every noise he cannot account for takes on the guise of malevolence.

“Fact two,” Martin continues. “There is the possibility – no, no, listen to me, Jon – there is the chance, however small, that those forces, those people, could come _here_.”

“So what, we should install more locks? Buy more fire extinguishers?”

“This isn't funny,” Martin says waspish.

“I'm not laughing,” Jon replies dogged.

Martin lets out another aggrieved noise. He takes a moment, steeples his hands against the lower half of his face.

“That Hunter,” Martin says slowly. “Had our address on them. Knew where we lived. If Daisy and Basira hadn't sorted them out, they would have come here, and tried again. And if it can happen once, then it could happen again. A-and some of those people, the ones that serve their gods a-and want to make a name for themselves by going after an Archivist – ”

Here Martin's voice catches thready, the centre of his terrors finally excavated.

“I can't – I can't _protect_ you from that, Jon,” he confesses. “I can't protect _Lewis_ from that. And if someone comes here, what if you can't either? You're not – you're not exactly in the game of e-exploding people any more.”

“Been trying to give it up,” Jon replies. Martin's laugh is a little wet.

“Sets a bad example anyway.”

Jon rubs the skin of Martin's hand. He doesn't know what he can say to make this better.

“I would like to propose an idea,” Martin says. Softer now. More tired. “and I-I want you to hear me out.”

“OK.”

“ _Whatever_ it is.”

“You're not exactly inspiring confidence.”

Martin gives him a Look.

“OK,” Jon says, rubbing his thumb over Martin's knuckles. “OK, I promise. Whatever it is, I-I'll at least listen.”

Martin nods, and though his lips are pinched, he squeezes Jon's hand once gratefully. He separates them, and gets up, going over to his shoulder bag slouched by the door. He'd been vague, earlier this week, when he'd gone out on an 'errand'. Jon had assumed it was something to do with their anniversary in the next few weeks.

Martin takes out a thick clump of folders from the stomach of the bag. Jon's heart drops when he sees the green-ink stamp of an imperious owl on the front of the beige folders but he says nothing.

“I have been thinking,” Martin says, planting himself back down. “About back-up plans. Last resorts, you know. If someone does come here, if they're more than either of us can handle, if we can't keep our son safe.”

He passes Jon the folders. They're stuffed wide with statements, corroborating evidence, photographs, police reports, newspaper snippets attached with paper clips. Jon reads the introductions of a few statements as he flicks through, feeling not a little unmoored by the way this conversation has progressed – _Statement of Dai Williams, regarding a library in Blaenau Gwent; Statement of Michalis Charalambous, regarding an unusual wedding present –_ and something aches in him like a barely-forgotten hunger, twinges like an old wound.

Near the top of the pile, there's a photograph, blown up to A4 size, of a book. The backdrop of an unremarkable desk, the cover itself blue backed, scuffed and foxed with age, the silver title decorated with florid curlicues: _The Shipping Forecast and Other Nautical Curiosities._ There's no author.

“What's this?”

“It's a Leitner,” Martin says. Not briskly, but straight-off the bat.

Jon pushes down several reactions with difficulty. Martin knows how he feels about Leitner. Martin wouldn't bring this to him, knowing what histories have left their scars on him, and beg for Jon to listen to him if it wasn't important.

“Go on,” Jon says, and nothing else.

“This book is currently in Archive Storage, where it's been for the past twenty or so years,” Martin continues. He's to-the-point now, direct, and Jon appreciates it. “Those are copies of all the statements I could find related to it, or people who have been in contact with it, and it makes up a fairly consistent picture of ownership and exchange for at least the past hundred and fifty years, records are patchy before that.”

“Which Power?”

“The Lonely.”

_That_ makes Jon look up. Martin's jaw is set for an argument but his voice betrayed him.

“Tell me,” he says.

“The statements are all mostly the same. The book gets found or left as inheritance or in library donations, and some poor sod picks it up. Specifically, what happens is it renders people invisible when read.”

Jon blinks.

“... you're taking the piss.”

“No. Practical research did some basic experiments to test it before it was boxed up properly, they've – there's notes there, if you want to read in detail, but basically, you read a few lines of it, and you and whatever you're holding can't be seen. It wears off after a while, depending on how much you've read. The researchers went up to about a page.”

“There's a catch, obviously.”

“It's addictive to some people. Some of the people in the statements can use it once, some of them can't shake the urge. The – er invisibility is more tempting to those vulnerable to the Lonely, or so the hypothesis goes. They read a little more, a little more and then, they're just gone.”

“So it's dangerous?”

“Yes.”

“Then _why_? Why show me this?”

“If someone comes here,” Martin says, “If it's – if it's the Vast o-or the Desolation or even th-the Slaughter, we can't fight them. We _can't,_ OK, we-we have _nothing_ that we could fight them with. So we can't fight them, and we can't outrun them, and I don't think hiding under the bed and hoping they leave is going to do much either. The best we can hope for is that we have a few minutes grace courtesy of your magical eyeballs. And that would at the very least give us time, to get Lewis somewhere safe, get out of harm's way, to go to Daisy's or something.”

“And your great plan is that we use a _Leitner_ to what, turn invisible and sneak away unseen?”

“I'm asking you at least consider it.”

“I have considered it and it's – it's a Leitner, Martin! You know how I – They're not toys, they're _dangerous!”_

“I know that! Of course I know that. But so is being unprotected! We wouldn't be using it for – it would be a last resort, nothing more. You can read the statements and the reports. I've read them all, over and over again, I-I've checked and doubled checked. As far as I can tell, the turning invisible is a temporary state.”

“For the right people. What about you?”

Martin does not meet his eyes.

“I wouldn't be using it.”

“...What.”

“I wouldn't – I wouldn't be able to,” he says. Quieter, self-conscious. “Much as I like to think that I'm – no. No, it'd be, it'd be too much of a temptation.”

Jon's tone has slipped flat and hard.

“So you're suggesting an escape plan that, what, doesn't include you?”

“Yes.”

“ _No._ ”

“Jon – ”

“No!” Jon wants to get up, to stand, to shake Martin by his ridiculous shoulders, because how dare he, how _dare_ he. “No, how can you even ask me that?”

“Because I need to,” Martin urges. “Because it's not just us. Because if the worst happens, I need to know we have some way of protecting Lewis, that you could use that book to make sure he's safe.”

“And leave you.”

“I'm not the one they want.”

“I don't remember them being all that picky about hurting whoever was in their way,” Jon bites back, and he knows he's louder now, that his eyes are getting damp and his face hot. “You can't know that.”

“No,” Martin replies. “No, I-I can't.”

Jon rubs at his eyes. The anger's boiled over and out of him at a dizzyingly come-down from furious. He listens, wondering if they've woken Lewis, but he doesn't hear the squeak of bedsprings. There's a wind picking up outside, and the cat twitches in sleep.

He doesn't feel angry any more. Just sick and scared.

“That's not fair,” he swallows, looking at the damp-blurred image of his husband's face. “That – that's not fair, to ask this.”

Martin's moved closer. Places his hand back over Jon's.

“I know,” he murmurs, and he sounds sorry, but that doesn't help either of them. “I know it's not. And if there was – was any other option, I wouldn't even think of suggesting it. But I'd, I'd like you to think about it. Please. For me.”

Jon leafs through the folders in his hands without taking any of them in. Martin strokes his back soothingly, and crowds in too close, not close enough.

“I'll read them,” Jon says eventually. Wetly and unhappily. “ The statements, reports, I-I will. For you. And if – and _only_ if they seem legitimate – I'll come with you and have a look at the book myself. And that's all I can promise you.”

“Thank you,” Martin whispers, and presses his lips to the thinning crown of Jon's head. Jon leans back slightly against his chest. He clears his throat. “Basira's all for performing some more clinical tests on the book, if you wanted some more concrete validation.”

“Why am I not surprised,” Jon says, feeling too tired to enquire further.

They linger on the sofa for a while after Martin shoves the folders back into his shoulder bag.

“I better put the dishes away,” Martin says.

“Leave them. I'll do them in the morning.”

Their bedtime routine is closer and quieter. Usually Martin goes up first, and Jon watches the newspaper review or the tail end of a documentary, but tonight he trails after him as Martin checks all the plugs and double-checks all the locks.

Martin pokes his head into Lewis' room, even though they said their goodnights hours ago. Jon can't begrudge him the anxiety.

“Kicked all the blankets off as usual,” he reports back as they knock elbows in the bathroom, Jon's mouth full of toothpaste, passing Martin a water glass to take his statins. Martin dutifully swallows the pill before reaching for his own toothbrush. “He sleeps like you, arms flung out all over the place.”

Jon doesn't deny it.

Jon gets into bed first, and fusses with chargers and alarms while Martin gets into a t-shirt and boxers. He gets the light and Jon follows the sound he makes as he approaches the bed in plunging darkness, the disturbance of the covers. Jon immediately curls against his shape, tucking himself tight and buried against his chest.

Martin doesn't comment on how clingy Jon is, how he knots their legs together, clutches him over-tight. On how hot the bed is going to get, on how his arm will go numb quickly from the angle. His own arms come around just as fiercely. He tells Jon goodnight, that he loves him into his hair, and Jon whispers it back into the dark and the heat, and knows it's true to the bones of him.

Neither of them sleep all that much that night.


End file.
